


Green

by Winterling42



Series: Flesh and Blood and Dust [36]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-16
Updated: 2017-08-16
Packaged: 2018-12-15 23:35:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11816547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterling42/pseuds/Winterling42
Summary: The Dag ghosts away towards her home, towards the sun and the Green Place that she promised the Keeper. She is stopped along the way, and faces a trial of her own.





	Green

After she had seen Furiosa taken care of, the Dag ghosted her way to the gardens with her vixen at her heels and a leather bag of seeds clutched to her chest. She was only vaguely aware of the Pups and Wretched around her—everything had seemed so muted and far away once Furiosa had fallen. Cheedo and Capable had knelt to pick her up, and Toast had gone to kill Joe’s twisted son, and the Dag had known that she could not help her sisters there. She had hovered, half invisible, and when Cheedo had left with Annie she had not been able to follow them. When the Nightingale left with Toast and Capable to take the names of the Mothers across in the Water Tower, the Dag had only watched them go. The vast crowd departed with them, and the Dag was left looking upwards.

She remembered the night they had walked out of the Vault; the rich smell of water in warm air, the fractal beauty of green leaves on display. She had no idea how to navigate this tower, with its oil-stained sands and smell of burned skin, but all she had to do was go up. And up, and up. Somehow, she attracted her own small following of Wretched and Pups. When the Dag stopped to turn and look at them, they all flinched away, just like she flinched from them.

“What do you want?” Pheona asked, her bark harsh in the stuffy corridor.

“Please,” a woman with one eye said, her daemon a black smudge of cat in her arms. “Please, take us up.”

“You are up!” The Dag shook her head furiously, sending her Vuvalini ornaments swinging. “I’m going to the green. It’s where I know who I am.”

“I knew green once,” the woman pleaded, reaching out one three-fingered hand. “I was a gardener before Last Wednesday.” In the moment it took the Dag to respond, the little group had pressed forward, each of them shouting to be heard over the others.

“I knew green too! Take me, White Lady, take me too!”

“ENOUGH!” Pheona snapped her teeth in a rabbit daemon’s face, shoved back a spotted dog that had gotten to close to the Dag’s leg. “Back! Let us listen!” And for a wonder, they went back. Their eyes were shining in the darkness, full of something dangerous like hope. The Dag watched them silently for a moment, hunched protectively over her bag of seeds.

Joe had said that the Wretched were parasites, sucking the blood and life out of the Citadel. That if given the chance, they would suck him dry and leave this place a husk. He said that if he didn’t keep control of them, that they would riot and burn and kill everything, leave only ashes and rocks behind.

Angharad had been Wretched once. She’d never spoken of it.

“Joe is dead,” the Dag said, because everything that mattered began there. “He built this place rotten, that’s all I know. But if you burn it down now, after everything Furiosa has done to bring us back alive—”

“We’ll throw you back down the lift,” Pheona snarled. “And we won’t lower it first.”

The Wretched looked at each other, looked at their daemons. The Dag didn’t know how to reassure them like Capable could, or intimidate them like Toast had. All she had were Miss Giddy’s wordburgers and three days surviving on the Fury Road.

Finally, the man with the spotted dog daemon stepped forward, just a little. His head shook on its thin neck; one of his hands was curled into a claw and wouldn’t open. “I’ve never seen a green thing living,” he said. “But please, White Lady, please. I only want to see them.”

“I tell the truth,” the woman with the cat daemon said, “I was a gardener before Last Wednesday. Who’s up there now; War Pups dying soft? I know plants, I can help you.”

One by one, each of them offered her their pleases, their thank yous and their prayers. The Dag was frightened of them, but not in the same way she had been a moment ago. She was frightened of the power they gave her without asking. They would have gone to their knees, would have kissed her feet like Joe had made her do, before. They would have, but she didn’t want them to. Instead she stepped off the stairs and met them half way, took the man by his scarred hand and led them up behind her. She didn’t know how to smile, not with all the prayers they had given her weighing on the back of her eyes. But she could do this without speaking, without smiling. She could hold the seeds the Keeper had given her and promise green things to the no-longer-Wretched at her back.


End file.
